#11: Estimating in Agile with Mike Cohn

Brian and Mike talk about why and how to use Story Points in estimating.

Overview 

To estimate or not to estimate. There are many different views on the matter. It’s important then to start with why. Why would we spend time estimating in the first place? What is the benefit of that effort? Do all Agile teams need to estimate? Join Brian Milner and Mike Cohn as they discuss estimating using Story Points in order to plan for things such as releases.

Listen now to discover: 

1:51 - Mike talks about the 3 reasons why would we estimate in the first place?

4:30 - Brian asks about the #NoEstimates movement

8:00 - Brian talks about the marketing aspect of his conference talk this year

9:42 - Mike defines what a Story Point is

14:30 - Mike talks about using Story Points as a performance metric

21:20 - Mike talks about consistency in point scales across teams

25:58 - Mike talks about working with contractual constraints when using Story Points

Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… 

Join us as we dive into Kanban with Kert Peterson. We’ll talk about this close relative to Scrum and discuss how these two can coexists in today’s Agile world.

References and resources mentioned in the show

Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn

Agile Estimating and Planning online ecourse by Mike Cohn

Woody Zuill of the #noestimates movement (and Mob Programming)

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This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. 

Mike Cohn is co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, and founder of Mountain Goat Software. He’s a veteran of applying Scrum and agile principles and practices to help organizations build better products, and ship them on time.

Show edited by Rhett Gill